<p>In February, my daughter had her FAFSA sent to CMU. She also asked for an Early Financial Aid Estimate from CMU. She received a letter stating that based on the numbers she entered, she would not qualify for need based financial aid.</p>
<p>A week after being admitted to CMU, she found out that she was offered a Carnegie Scholarship. She sent in her CSS PROFILE and tax documents as requested in order to have the scholarship credited to her account when she enrolled.</p>
<p>Yesterday morning, we discovered that the scholarship had been removed from her admission portal. When we called to ask for an explanation, we were told that the Carnegie Scholarship is more need based than merit based. Why did CMU offer the scholarship in the first place when they have known since February that she would not qualify for need based aid? There was no explanation in the revised letter posted online. </p>
<p>This has left our family with a poor impression of the CMU administration. My daughter is so upset, she is ready to drop CMU for another college. The others seem to be more reliable and trustworthy.</p>
<p>Don’t call but write a letter and say exactly what you said above. If your Fafsa EFC was more than the COA back in Feb, then they knew then and should not now take away the scholarship.</p>
<p>And from their own website it says it is for people who will get little or no aid. “Scholarships are awards that you do not have to repay. Carnegie Mellon offers the Carnegie Scholarship, which is a need- and merit-based scholarship, awarded to artistically and academically talented middle income students who qualify for little to no need-based financial aid”</p>
<p>Tell them that CMU is your D’s first choice and to please honor their original estimate and reinstate the scholarship.</p>
<p>^ Specifically, the scholarship is for students who qualify for little to no NEED-BASED aid, but by CMU’s judgement would still have difficulty paying the full amount (there’s also the merit component, but you must have met that anyway).</p>
<p>If you still have the letter from the initial offer, check to see if there are any notes at the bottom. If you have the one that says “Award tentative pending receipt of required forms,” there’s not much you can do. The university uses CSS profile and the IDOC service to get a more complete picture of your family’s ability to pay than FAFSA alone gives them, so they must have revised their offer after you gave them the additional data.</p>
<p>The estimation letter meant that your EFC (an amount calculated by a standard formula which CMU does not control) was enough to cover the costs of your first year, so you couldn’t get federal aid or grant money. CMU might have still been able to offer the scholarship, but they needed more information to know for sure. Once they got that, they unfortunately decided you did not meet their standards for need. They may be stingy, but their actions in this case weren’t dishonest or deceitful. I hope you don’t let this frustrating incident ruin your impression of the university as a whole.</p>
<p>While I get what others are saying above, I think what CMU did was not OK at all. If they had the initial understanding that the family did not qualify for need based aid then they should have waited for all documentation to be in before ever offering any possibility of a merit scholarship. That’s just wrong to give hope of a merit scholarship then take it back and claim it was more based on need than merit. I too would be upset and question this.
It would leave a bad feeling for us.
My son will be attending CMU full pay and seeing posts like this does make us nervous about the integrity of the school. My son was offered an almost full ride (tuition & housing) at an LAC but chose CMU because it was a much better fit for him. However the other school never let on that any merit offer was a sure thing until it was a “sure thing”.I would certainly look into having them honor the offer.</p>
<p>This is misleading–it makes it sound like the university promised her the scholarship and then insisted she submit the profile & tax documents merely as a formality, “in order to have the scholarship credited to her account when she enrolled.” I doubt that that was actually the case. All the material I’ve gotten from CMU makes it very clear that an application for financial aid is not complete without the CSS profile, and when an offer of aid is tentative they mark it as such. It’s not like they were going back on their word.</p>
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<p>Yes, CMU knew the family didn’t qualify for need-based aid, but that estimate was based only on the FAFSA. CMU prefers to make its own assessment of each family’s ability to pay, and as far as they could tell the family might have still qualified for the university’s scholarship, so why not encourage them to finish applying? Otherwise families might miss out on aid because the first estimate discouraged them.</p>
<p>As for sending out an estimated package before they have all the information, the university typically doesn’t do that. It was my impression that they won’t send you an offer at all until all your required documents are checked off the list. I’m not sure why they made an exception in this case.</p>
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<p>It’s not based MORE on need than merit. The Carnegie scholarship is considered a “merit scholarship” because it is awarded to students who do not exhibit (much) need as determined by the standard formula which I mentioned above. However, they still have to meet CMU’s requirement of being “middle income students” who show need as determined by CMU. </p>
<p>Typically you use the term “need” when referring to the government’s judgement and the term “ability to pay” when referring to the university’s judgement, but the two get mixed up a lot, which is probably the source of this family’s confusion.</p>
<p>It’s a need-based scholarship with a merit component, but it’s also targeted at a higher level where folks typically wouldn’t be offered need-based aid from CMU (vs., say, Harvard or Yale, where they would).</p>